From the Penthouse to the Dog House to God’s House, KDWN host Steve Sanchez believes he has the #1 radio show in Las Vegas because of God.
“I’m on a mission from God. You know, I really feel that I do, and not in a religious aspect,” Sanchez told Barrett News Media over a Zoom call. “I’m not against religion. I think there are beautiful religions around the world. But religions are man-made, man-made doctrine, man-made rituals, and traditions. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just more a relationship guy.”
He later added, “I’m a believer in Christ. I was saved, I saw where my life was, and I see where it is now. Only God. That’s it. Only God. Because there’s no other explanation. There’s no other explanation of who I used to be to who I am today. And so that’s why that stays very important and is really a fundamental core for me.”
Steve Sanchez was born in Merced, California to an almond rancher. “[It was a] great, great place to grow up. And then went to college, graduated, moved to San Diego, met my wife, and then 25 years ago, relocated out here to the desert.”
He worked in the financial sector which he called The Penthouse, which sent him to the Dog House. “When you’re younger and you’re making a lot of money, you have a tendency to not discipline yourself. At least I did.” He added, “What we were doing was just spending everything we’d bring in, and yet I was advising clients to do the opposite.”
The now 54-year-old said, “We went from that penthouse living in terms of just making a ton of money and living the dream to facing bad choices, bad investment decisions, and practically losing almost everything. And so during that time, it started putting a strain on our marriage, because communication and finances are two of the biggest things that dissolve a marriage. We decided to say maybe we need to give this God thing a try. We’ve tried everything else.”
Sanchez said he and his wife were invited to a religious marriage retreat, “And it changed our lives. We became born again.” He later added “We’re not religious people. I’m just not a big religious guy, but just a real faithful relationship with Jesus changed our lives, our perspective, our thinking, the way we had money, the way we handled our marriage or life, our children, our business.”
Steve Sanchez also said “[When we] really started just putting everything down and the burdens on to God, as he says to do, our life changed. And not that it doesn’t give us challenges. Yeah, we’re humans, we’re going to have challenges. But it opened up doors of opportunity just like this.”
Soon after, Sanchez’s “Real, Raw, and Relevant” talk show all came about by chance. “Back in 2009, a buddy of mine had a radio show and he said, look, why don’t you just partner with me?” Sanchez said yes, telling BNM, “I came on as a frequent guest host for a financial talk radio show. And so I started doing that with him. And then he, after about a year, said, ‘Look, it’s not something I want to do anymore’ and the station manager said, ‘Look, we really like you. We think you’ve got something to offer for radio, but we would like to offer you a show on the weekends and do more of a talk radio show, not a financial show. Just talk radio.’”
The station’s reasoning for the pivot? “‘When you would come on with your buddy, you would talk a lot about what’s going on in the culture or politics.’ And so that’s what happened,” He added, “I was offered a weekend show on Sundays, that show two years later, is on in 73 markets and syndication on Sunday nights and here we are now.”
Steve Sanchez frames his show not for the left or right but for Americans as a whole. “When you look around today, the country is really divided. Left, right, this, that, and the other. And I got caught into that for a long time. For a lot of years, especially in the early days of radio.”
He added, “Everything has to just be the conservative way, the conservative ways, the way and I’ve learned that that’s not really the case. I’ve learned that even though I’m a conservative in values, there are some things that I’m more libertarian on. And so I started thinking maybe we needed to stop with the label stuff and start talking like Americans. And what did our framers envision for the country? God, family, country.”
Today, Sanchez keeps a few questions in mind when doing a show on KDWN.
“When I’m talking about something politically or culturally [relevant], I always try to go back and say, ‘How does God view this for me?’ And when I hear that, how am I going to present it to the audience? I don’t want to be preachy, because my job is not to be an evangelist and to turn people over to what I believe. My job is just to be authentic with people and say, ‘This is what I believe in. Here’s why’, and I can back it by here’s what our framers and our founders envisioned. Here’s what the Bible — which is my worldview — believes and I tie it in. But I’m very respectful of other’s opinions. And so we may have debates on it. But in this great country, the Constitution affords us to believe what we want to believe.”
Steve Sanchez said he likes to keep his 3-hour format simple. “What we’ve done is what we like to do is in the first hour of the show, we like to open up with something that is culturally appropriate for everybody… Our second hour of the show, that’s more of our political hour. We start talking about politics and, and how politics play a role into what we just talked about in the first hour.”
He then said, “Typically our third hour is let’s let the community get on a soapbox and voice their opinion, and we open up our show for calls. We get more calls than we can handle.”
Of his show structure Steve Sanchez said, “That recipe has worked really well that that recipe is, I think, a recipe for success.”
Another part of Sanchez’s success is because he’s not the normal talk radio guy.
“People relate to that because I think more people are like me, where we’re not [wearing] a suit and tie guy every single day, and those people are forgotten in America. Our job is to kind of remind the establishment and the powers that be that these people who look like me basically have built the country. And we can’t forget them.”
Krystina Alarcon Carroll is a news media columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
